some people just dont understand..

[gc82000]

What about the shooter not the cop but the other guy. This entire situation started with him.

He should get some maximum jail time. Assault with a paintball gun is assault with a weapon a misdemeanor on Guam.
PLus if he ever showed his face around a real paintball feild, I would pesonally shoot his face. It is one thing to shoot at friends with protection, and anything to shoot at an armed off duty cop.

[steveo356]

Ive been shot in the face once about an inch under the eye, that kid felt the pain a half full 20 oz cna do when thrown at about 400 mph. he did it on purpose and he was over shootin me all day playin in the woods behind my house... neeedless to say i dont think ill let him come out and play any more. kids who shoot unprotected peopel should be locked up

[judgetimmmaaa]

facts that we know from the news article everything elses is made up,

1."around 9:20 p.m"
so its dark
2."the officer went outside his home to check on noises"
Ok so any body would be on edge, ever know a cop? cops tend to be more nervouse and cautious than other people Why because they general deal with the worst part of society. so much crap goes on that never hits the news and they are always threatend and some of those people that make threats can and will attempt to carry trhem out.

3."After being struck with what he believed was a real bullet"
any body would be scared and full of adrelin and react with what ever is close at hand to defend themselves.

4."he said, he saw the suspect pointing a black weapon at him" It says nothing about how close or far he was. was he in standing in the street like a gun fight at hign noon or crouched behinf a car or hugging a building? We dont know and can only guess.

5. "pulled out his gun and fired" Once agin he has just been struck in the face by something with a high rate of velocity, your disorientd I have been hit is it a flesh wound am i alive will there be more shoots fired oh wait call a ref for a paint check? no you react in this case it was a man with a gun it did not have to be an off duty cop lots of people own guns. A man has been assulted and reacted.

Basicaly its another sad day for paintball, The "20-year-old" is lucky to be alive. If I hear a noise that concerns me enough to grab a pstol and investigate and i get blind sided I might retun fire, I hope that never happends but it is a reallity.

Some of the people that play paintball and have opinions really should keep them to them selves, until thay have walked in some elses shoes. Sign up with you rlocal police department for a ride along, if your lucky and get "action" you will have a cop that takes you to the bad part of town and might even get to roll code with the lights and sirens on and exceed the spped limit but most likely that wont happen you will get a ride along in the quiet part of town. why becaus ethey dont want cilvians getting hurt. but if you get the chance listen to whats going on on there radio, there are som many crimes that you never hear about that happen every night.

No I am not a cop, I do have friends that are cops,
Do i think there are bad cops? YES just like every part of society you have bad apples but some jobs they make bigger headlines and may or may not get away with more than others. So back off the cops and grow up.

What this kid did was wrong, illegal and dangerous and potentialy deadly basicaly i think it qualifies as assult possibly felony assult

Some of the people in this forum need to act a little more mature, if I have offened you then my guess is your one of the people that need to grow up.

[kenndogg]

Yes, but police officers are trained or should be trained for this kind of stuff. Anyway, I just hate cops b/c they never need a reason for what they do. And b/c I'm always in the wrong place at the wrong time for some reason.

pure stupidity.

[AclowN]

i see all this bickering about the officer this the officer that... the officer did what he has been trained to do, darkness, cant see well in the first place, something hits you in the face.... HARD.... now you look up, through the paint/shell that has splattered all over your face and into your eyes..... or for those that dont think it broke, you look up already feeling the immediate nausea of a blow to the front of your face, and yes a blow cause i know this feeling... now... paint or no paint, your looking up blinded or dizzy..... either situation not good when you think you have been shot, you try to return fire on a target you CAN NOT FOCUS ON... so.. your eyes can not focus... due to either reason... and you try and hit something that has obviously threatened you. i think any person alive would say that someone shooting you in your face with a paintball marker, as you're simply walking outside your house?? could easily be seen as a threat.

People bickering about what the officer did is ignoring the true issue here.... the fact of the matter is, this kind of publicity is hurting our sport bigtime... finally paintball is hitting TV more and more... and soon this stuff won't be as bad... but look at it from the standpoint of the generally ignorant public in reference to this sport... imagine if ALL you saw about other sports was the bad.... look at football for instance, what if all you heard about was the injury list..... hear about broken bones galore... the occasional death... permanent injuries.... paralysis.... look at that... if that is all you see... if you saw none of the gameplay cause you never went to a local field and watched a team play..... would this not seem to be a VERY scary and dangerous sport if that is all you knew?

in honesty, if ALL I saw was injuries and maybe the occasional chatter about who won the title for a certain sport, ANY sport... i would be reluctant to let anyone participate if i could prevent it... because injury reports are never a beautiful thing to look at......... well, unless its hockey :P just kiddin

this post is just showing the underlying problems, all that we see on the News, or until recently, television in general was the BAD stuff about the sport... pretty scary stuff to someone that doesnt know the sport...

[Mardi]

We all know that it was a paintball gun to begin with. Now we're a paintball community so if we heard the 'thwack-thwack' of a gun we would be able to distinguish it from a real gun and a paintball marker. Put yourself in the cop's shoes, he walks out of his house after hearing noise that sounds like gunfire (if he didn't hear a gunfire-sound alike, then why'd he have his gun on him?) so yeah, he exits his house to inspect the gunfire. BAM he gets hit in the face. Now none of you can honestly say that getting hit doesn't hurt. I've been playing for three years, I'm not that good, I get out mostly every game and still every time I get hit it stings.

You might be able to build up a little bit of tolerance but from 100 feet away on a field and the balls can still leave welts/bruises on your body, through a jersey, through gloves... Etc. I've been hit on the bare neck and it killed for three days afterward. Now, imaging this, you were just hit in the face. Even with my mask on, if I get hit in the top of the mask/top of the forehead, my head still snaps back from human reaction.

You were just shot in the bare face, it stings, and hurts, and you now have a liquid running down your face. At a paintball field you'd suspect it to be a paintball but on the streets of a city it's another story... To this day I still have to go tell my neighbors that what I am shooting at my target range in my backyard is in fact a paintball marker. I don't take my stuff out in public at all unless it's tucked away in a backpack or that kind of such. So how often does a regular Joe see a paintball marker?

Paintball is a new sport, I could ask every single person that would come to my work (I work in a mall) and guaranteed that only a tenth of the people could actually describe how a paintball marker works or describe it accurately in appearance wise. Most have heard about the sport, but it's a new sport so players are still rare.

Any who back to topic, you're a cop, you were just shot in the face, it hurts, badly, first instinct? You were just shot (with a real gun)... Paintball markers come with their own 'BAM' aftershock, so the only thing setting them apart from actual guns are (well besides the bullets) are the appearance and method of working. Sure they are fruity colors and look pretty crazy but take the Tippmann series, they LOOK Like M4s... Take an uneducated average Joe, shoot them in the face and then record down their action.

I completely agree with everything the cop did; however I would have rather him hit the kid, somewhere non-lethal though. He was just shot in the face, adrenaline is running, and he has a split second to draw his own gun and take a shot. Chances are that he isn't going to sit there for a second, take aim, and then fire. First shot is a warning, and then you go for the organs...

Notice to kiddos: Paintball is a fun, safe sport; if you treat it in a fun and safe way. Have consideration for your neighbors and other city neighbors and leave your markers concealed during transport and only use them in a game situation. Treat them like a regular gun because sure they can't do as much damage as a regular gun but shoot someone in the naked eye and by golly, It doesn't matter what you got shot with, you'll be blind. Play safe, and remember, it's a game but treat it with respect.

(Sorry for the rant, I was just pissed at the people that were mocking the Police Officer's ability to shoot. They shouldn't be taking stabs at the officer; it wasn't his fault that he got shot. He has probably never been shot with a paintball or a bullet, so how could he have compared this wound to anything if he's never been shot before.

Blame the incident on the kid with the trigger-happy finger. They're what I like to call the 'one percent-ers'. Only 1% of the paintball Population is out to shoot stop signs, and random people. And even though there are 99% of us out here, that one person out of a hundred is what gives the rest of us a bad rep.)

-Mardi

Edit: Fixed the spelling mistakes

[azza]

I havnt read all the posts, but if someone in NZ got done with that, once they were arrested and found guilty would face upto 3 months in jail (pretty weak IMO) and or a fine of upto $2000USD ($3000NZD)

Cheers
Azza